Load-Balancing EBS 12.2 Environments

You can use load-balancing routers (LBR) to protect your E-Business Suite 12.2 environment from system failures. Load-balancers increase your environment's fault-tolerance and scalability by distributing load across a pool of servers. See:

HTTP Layer load-balancing is the most common method used in E-Business Suite environments. In this configuration, end-users navigate to a specific Web Entry Point that represents your E-Business Suite's domain name. An HTTP Layer load-balancer routes all subsequent traffic for a specific user to a specific Web Node.

HTTP Layer load-balancers may use heartbeat checks for node death detection and restart, and sophisticated algorithms for load-balancing.

DNS-Based Load-Balancing

When an end-user's browser attempts to access your E-Business Suite environment, your local Domain Name Server (DNS) can direct that user to a specific application server in a pool based on available capacity:

Traffic for that user's session will be handled by the application server 10.10.10.10, while other users' traffic may be directed to other application servers in the pool. Like HTTP layer load-balancers, many
DNS-based load-balancers use heartbeat checks against nodes and sophisticated algorithms for load-balancing.

Minimum Requirement: Session Persistence

Oracle doesn't certify specific load-balancers or networking hardware with the E-Business Suite. We've designed the E-Business Suite to be able to use load-balancers in general. Our instructions for configuring load-balancers should work for all standards-compliant networking solutions, whether they are hardware or software-based.

The minimum requirement is that a load-balancer support session persistence. Persistence describes a mode where a client's initial HTTP connection is directed to a particular application server, and then subsequent HTTP requests from that client are directed to the same server. As long as a load-balancer is able to handle session persistence (also referred to as "stickiness"), it's likely to work with the E-Business Suite.

Other load-balancing variations

EBS 12.2 can be deployed in a number of variations to handle specialized or advanced load-balancing requirements. For details about implementing the following variations, see:

WLS Clusters: EBS 12.2 uses WebLogic Server. It is possible to deploy multiple WebLogic Server instances in a cluster to increase scalability and fault-tolerance. A cluster appears to clients to be a single WebLogic Server instance. The server instances that constitute a cluster can run on the same machine, or be located on different machines. You can increase a cluster’s capacity by adding additional server instances to the cluster on an existing machine, or you can add machines to the cluster to host the incremental server instances. Each server instance in a cluster must run the same version of WebLogic Server.

Multiple Web Entry Points: It is possible to configure the same EBS environment to have multiple web entry points (URLs). For example, users might be able to access your EBS environment via the following different URLs:

store.company.com

recruitment.company.com

Functional redirection: It is possible to direct users to specific servers based upon the functional responsibilities that they chose. For example, manufacturing end-users may be directed to a different pool of servers than, say, HRMS end-users.